[open] you'll come back when it's over

[eolasemah]

WHO friends and family of Sina Dahlasanor
WHAT: post-mortem interactions
WHEN: the evening of 7 Haring and onward
WHERE: the infirmary and elsewhere
NOTES: CW for death and illness. Apart from the main post I will not be tagging in. This thread is for wake/funeral/burial arrangements and anything else you guys want to play out pertaining to Sina's death, so feel free to make top levels or do whatever else!

It was the evening of the sixth when Galadriel paid her visit to Sina, after which the girl became mostly unresponsive. Still breathing, she slept through the night and day, waking up in the late afternoon just long enough to reach for Nari's hand and whisper something to her before falling away again. The candles grew dim and the shadows long before she stirred again, pulling in a last rasping breath, her lips moving soundlessly to form two unknown words as she exhaled and fell still.

It was hardly ten minutes later when, witnessed by friends and clan, the glowing green patch of magic that had plagued them all for the last couple years simply... vanished from the elf's sternum, as though it had never been there. Lying small and wasted away, destroyed from the inside out, anyone who looked at Sina for the first time would not understand what had killed her.

The room was then vacated by all but Keeper Thalia and Sina's parents, a balding large-eyed man with a quivering chin and a plain, sandy-haired woman, neither appearing all that much more vital than their late daughter. It was they who prepared the body for the resulting rites, silent and weary, their miracle baby laid to an untimely rest.

Out in the hall, Nari found herself surrounded in a collective embrace by a sea of russet-haired Dalish, her family. Even in a time like this, being with their daughter and sister brought comfort, and they hoped she might find some as well.
Sedi and Nymii stood as sentries on either side of the door, permitting only mourners and scowling down otherwise unrelated onlookers.

At last, at long last, it was over.

Comments

[gatheringstorm]

Faced with the undeniable truth of their collective failure, Korrin winces as Sina's perception isn't exactly a wrong one. "We should have...I don't know, done more. Looking back, it feels like too much time was spent on shit that didn't matter, all while that blasted thing was consuming her. We should have been more aggressive, whatever it took...if we'd fought harder...." Some part of her has to believe it wasn't completely inevitable, but if it wasn't then the truth is that Sina is dead because of it. Either way, something in her has broken and she has no idea when it will heal, if ever.

She tries to focus on Araceli's words while fighting that tide wave of grief and guilt, though tears still keep forming. If she were in a calmer frame of mind, she would absolutely agree with Araceli, all the way. "And when it hurts so badly that you think you might break apart for it? What then? I don't want to feel nothing, but...this pain is enough to drown in, many times over."

[foxsays]

Everyone left. Everyone left who could have helped her along with none of them pushing for it; if Sina had been human, not a mage, at least not Dalish would that have changed the hands in it, the rush to assist her? (The part of Araceli that's the common girl raised to sit by a queen snaps yes, fast enough she might bite her tongue if she said it aloud.) "We sit and indulge the wrong faces too often but too many of the same faces turn around to accuse when doing work gets in the way. If we could all get in line we might fucking move forward together as one."

Didn't you tell her she should be Inquisition, that we stop being what we were? Do you think they would have helped her sooner if she'd done that? Or do you think that to comfort yourself? A mind is a poisonous thing when it wants nothing more than to eat itself the way hers does when she has too many things spread before her to look at this way and that.

It's ugly that some part of her is spoiling for a fight, but that's being alive too when she chokes out a ragged laugh through the tears even as it burns the whole way. "Then you drown and come up gasping - there's nothing the ocean hasn't seen, and your tears are the salt that belongs to it. Do you want to feel nothing? You won't feel anything at all, there's not some middle ground here. Numb or everything. This ache, a hand in yours, a warm bed you won't sleep in, food you don't want but still need or nothing." There's a bitter sullen note to it but she's not going to take it back (she can't) and she's lived two years grieving as is with her heart still open as she was given it.

[gatheringstorm]

Moving together as one...it's a nice thought, if Korrin was in the headspace to focus on it, but she isn't. She just heard Sina's last breath, just saw the light fade from her chest. Unless Corypheus is leveling Kirkwall right at that moment, she's staying right where she is and giving the middle finger to 'the big picture', her mind only capable of mourning her dear friend. She's been mourning her for months, preparing herself...but it doesn't matter, the wound is now fresh and raw all over again. Preparation did nothing.

"'Numb or everything'. Heh, you know I'm an all-or-nothing person anyway. It figures that trait would come to bite me in the ass." Her laugh is hollow and soon chokes off. "...I don't want numb, but right now everything hurts too much. I close my eyes, and I see her still form on the bed. I remember that night at the shindig in Skyhold, when twirled her around because she couldn't dance. She's really gone...." Her tears, never really dried, flow anew.

[foxsays]

Sometimes it's the only way to live here. To be part of a thing bigger than you, to make yourself such a part of the life that fault can't be found, and you become invested to the point that all your hours are eaten up by it. How many others understand it? Araceli doesn't think of herself as rifter. Araceli doesn't have as many rifter friends as native. She has a whole life here that she'd like to better not just for her own sake; selfish with her pleasures, able to set so much aside to see a thing done.

"Parts of her are still here. Nari. The garden," the thrice-damned garden that might have sped up her decline, "the people she touched and loved. I can't remember what she told me about where the Dalish go just now."

Maybe because Sina hadn't seemed so sure. Araceli knows she goes to the sea, her body into a hundred other things, the other part to a place beyond that but Sina hadn't seemed sure at all about it. It's just that this is the speech she thought she might give to Fern and not someone who already watched a death occupy a space in a bed as long as it did.

"Remember that then. Remember the better times if it's what gets you through it. When she couldn't even stomach honeyed wine." Why is it that that sends Araceli off the way it does, hiccuping hard enough it hurts, bends her double at the waist.

[gatheringstorm]

"Oh, kadan. It's alright, I've got you. Let it all out...." Korrin's vision blurs again as Araceli loses it, her own uneven breaths and crying spells making it difficult to speak for the moment. However, that doesn't mean she has no comfort to provide. She curls up around her small and slight kadan, a large but gentle hand rubbing her back. They'll be so spent by the time this cycle of comforting each other is over, but if that's what it takes to get through this, so be it.

She doesn't want to think about that garden either, not now and not for the foreseeable future. Maybe at some point, it will be the reminder Araceli mentions but for now it's just one more reason to avoid Hightown. However, Nari's an entirely different matter and the thought of their grieving friend has her voice thick with pain. "We'll find Nari when we can manage it, let her know she still has us." At least she's in the arms of her clanmates now, and they'll take good care of her. Still, the three of them spent so much time together by Sina's bedside, that it only seems right to see her once more together.

[foxsays]

How much easier to just let go. To let it out and sob openly against Korrin after all this time holding it in her chest, swallowing it down, biting her tongue even after what she admitted to Sina before she went that she allows it to happen. To wash over her as a wave does. Why fight it? Breathe when you can, save your strength instead of filling your lungs.

Her stomach aches from it when she can finally get a hold of herself, tucked so close to Korrin, clutching at her tight until she's able to speak again. Tear-stained - worse, most likely worse - her mouth is by Korrin's shoulder when she does. "Give her time with her clan first, I think we need a night just...in our bed. With Lux. Even lying awake. Nari's with everyone that loved them both too." Beleth and Sorrel probably if she thinks about it.

[gatheringstorm]

Just holding onto Araceli, letting her sob until she can't any longer, Korrin eventually manages to regain a vague sense of calm, at some point too drained even for tears. She nods, unable to disagree with her kadan's suggestion. A night in seclusion with Lux is about all she can handle, after this. "She is, thankfully. Alright, I'm ready to try moving. You don't have to, kadan." Araceli is always light enough for her to carry, so if she'd prefer not to move that's not an issue.

[foxsays]

"I have legs." Getting them under her is another matter but with a shaking breath she does that, pushes herself up and to her feet. Shock sets in, it's that full realisation that worse is to come as a hand is held out to Korrin anyway because Araceli isn't willing to lose face outside the hall. "Okay. I'm-- let's go. Let's go and lock the door."